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[Benji]

There haven't been very many posts recently. I think we're all sitting around waiting for someone to go to camp to tell us what's going on.

[Boomerang]

Yeah really its way too quiet here lately. But if i'm not mistaken someone was at camp this week and should have graduated today. I cant remember who it is though. Hopefully we will hear something from them over the weekend.

[LaRsOnAtRiXkIx]

Yeah really its way too quiet here lately. But if i'm not mistaken someone was at camp this week and should have graduated today. I cant remember who it is though. Hopefully we will hear something from them over the weekend.

that would be me. hehe.it was AWESOME. like ok.. i went a day early, and i got into atlanta around 6, and there were like 40 adults and kids with bright orange tshirts that said space camp project so i was like wow i bet i know where theyre going, and they were all on my plane to huntsville which was..loud. but it was fine. so we landed in huntsville, i got my bags, got crammed into a bus with those people, they were all from oregon, then got to space camp. we went in put our stuff down and joel had us line up against the wall and we got our name tags. there was a guy there who was in mach 3, we were the only two early arrivals who werent in that big group so we just stuck together lol. then they made us go eat dinner which was..disgusting..like ham and cheese on a hamburger roll with cookies and chips. lol. then we went and watched a movie, my favorite martian which i really didnt like so i zoned out for most of it, until another huge group of kids, mostly in academy, from a school in chicago came. after a while the lady in charge of us came back and turned off the movie and made the girls go on one side and the guys on the other side of the room and was like you have this much time blablabla. thennn we went back to hab1 and got our stuff and moved it to hab2 where we were forced to sleep the first night. oh man that was so insane. it was LOUD. and like everyone knew eachother so i was just like yeah.. and slept. so the next morning we woke up and moved our stuff back into hab1 and went to breakfast. after breakfast a guy took over watching us..we divided up so the advanced kids (there were 4 of us at that point, 3 were from the oregon group) and the camp kids were together and the huge group of academy kids were together. we went and played some games under pathfinder then went in the museum until 1045ish when us advanced kids had to go back to hab1 and be with our real group. so we went and there was already two people there, one was a guy who had been in my group last time, actually the 3 people from oregon had been too. then some more people came and we were like yep.. there were 10 people on my team, 4 pilots and 6 mission specialists. 6 of the 10 had been on the same academy team with me, but we werent too close but we really are now. and there were 4 girls and 6 boys. so we put our stuff in our room and came back down. my night counselor was krispy. she was cool. ooh she mentioned that they were tentatively talking about bringing back the 24 hour EDM's in 2-3 years which would be so awesome. i dont remember much about the first night. we had some rocketry breifing with this guy billy who was really old and did a lot of breifings, and we did why space which was funny..the presentations were at least. lol. then our counselor made our positions for each of the 1 hour missions. for alpha i was ss1, for bravo i was ms1, and for charlie i was eva/inco. then we went to bed. the next morning we woke up and met our day counselor, michelle. we went to breakfast and then got on the bus to go to the pool. i didnt swim though cuz yeah i didnt want to. i guess they had fun though lol. after swimming we had an hour to take showers and call people and get into our flight suits for the group picture. we rode the mars simulator then got our picture on the lem..it looks..interesting. ill scan it later. i think we had a breifing or something and lunch then our night leader came and we had area 51. we broke into groups of 5, each with 3 guys 2 girls and did the things. alabama red CLAY not dirt as i was corrected a thousand times stains, and hard plastic bruises. ill just leave that experience at that. lol. after dinner we had a lil breifing talk on scuba, and talked about the pressure and stuff..then we had mission training. there were two people in station at that point cuz its weird but origionally there were actually 5 pilots 5 mission specialists but that changed monday night to 4 pilots 6 mission specialists..jus cuz..so yeah it was me and aimee who was FO. so we just learned how to use stuff and where it was for an hour and it was kinda boring but the guy, kendall, who was teaching us everything was really funny. after training we went on the 1/6 gravity chair which is always fun haha. i moved my bed cuz i was the only one on one side ofthe room and the other 3 girls weree on the other so i moved into the bottom bunk on that side of the room and we stayed up late talking. then tuesday after breakfast the mission specialists went to get our pre-scuba physicals with the nurse. that took a while...then some stuff happened and our counselor couldnt be with us for a lil while so this really cool guy took us rock climbing then on g force a few times then we played 4square until she came back. after that we went and watched the apollo 15 part of from the earth to the moon and talked about communication so we played hide and go seek with walkie talkies in teams, like describing our hiding spot so the other team could find us. after that we met back up with our pilots and went to lunch then bravo training. where i was ms1. but i got really sick when we were still on the middeck talking about giving the physicals so i had to go to sick bay and didnt get to learn about the rest of the position.. but yeah. after a while in sick bay i got to go back with my group and we had split again, mission specialists and pilots..we were in a trailer learing about aero engineering, i missed most of the learning part but we got to make a glider and then a lil plane using styrofoam and stuff. it was really fun. after we tested them to see who's went straightest and who's could turn the best. mine didnt win either lol. but it was still fun. it was POURING then like wow i dont think i had ever seen rain that hard. so we ran up to the museum after we were done to meet up with the pilots and our counselor. i think we had some breifing or something after that...the breifings just blurred together, i took notes on them but i dont remember when most of them were. after dinner the pilots went somewhere, i have no clue where they were half the time we werent together, and we went up to the scuba tank. the first like hour we just learned how to do everything which was fun..oh only 4 of the 6 mission specialists were going to scuba dive because one had asthma and one had a bad cut on his finger so it was just the 4 of us..but one couldnt comfortably breath out of the regulator so she didnt go down so then there were 3..so i started going down with this guy and we got to like 10 feet which isnt even really deep and my stupid left ear wouldnt equilize so we tried going down more and it was starting to hurt so we had to go up and we tried going back down two more times but it just wouldnt do it so i couldnt go down which realllly ticked me off. the other two people made it down fine though. the rest of us just swam around. when we were done there everyone who breathed off the regulators had to go back to the nurse for a post scuba physical..then we got to go put our towels and bathing suits away then we had charlie mission training. i was in mocr for that which i hate. but it wasnt so bad, just telling the ms's on the orbiter what to do. we went to bed after that. we didnt really sleep though, we had like this war with the astrotrek people sleeping in the room next to us. they were being REALLY loud and so we were hitting the wall lol then theyd hit it back and be quiet for a while and then theyd get all loud and we were like UGH, i was really tired the days there are soo long, but those stupid people were running out there door and opening ours then running back then they actually came IN our room and turned on the light we were like OMFG where are the counselors..but they like totally disappear at night. we went out and this was around..1230 and knocked on the door with the counselor on duty sign but no one woke up so we just tried to sleep. wednesday we had all three one hour missions. we had alpha right after breakfast and ah it was a total disaster for us in the station. the SET time never started..and thats the clock we were soposed to go by so the guy was on the phone with whoever the counselor in mocr was trying to fix it then they did fix it and it started at 22 min cuz thats where it would have been..so we didnt finish like anything. i made flubber but didnt finish my questions and we were way behind and messedup with checklists. but oh well, it was a stupid computer problem. we had a solar physics breifing after that...and we had to go outside with billy and listen to the sun on the radiotelescope. it was SOOOOO cold on wednesday. and YES i am from vermont and i said it was cold. it was in the lower 40's i was like ahh. after that everyone went to talk about space history but i went with arlisa to learn how to use the canada arm and do ms1 stuff. then i met back up with my team. for the last like 20 min of space history before we went to lunch then back to the training center floor for our bravo mission. that one went a LOT better than the first. we did the rest of area 51 after that, inside which was nice. we did better than we did at the outside ones. and it was slightly less painfull lol.i dont remember what we did until dinner. then we made rockets in pairs of two. the boys were being all mean lol the were like yea you girls cant build a rocket. but haha. we launched them on friday...ours was unique it went up up up and we couldnt really see it then it just sort of fell next to the stop sign and died. but at least it didnt catch on fire then start going at the people on the launch pad like some of the boys did. actually i think ours did catch on fire but yeah. we had our charlie mission which went fine then we had a really short breifing on orbital mechanics before we fought over EDM positions. we wrote our first second and third choices on the board then our counselor made all the positions. for the first half i was ss2 and then after the crew exchange i was ms1. i was happy. we went to bed and actually got some sleep. we woke up and went to breakfast then got edm training, where they pretty much just explained the anomalies. then we got to have our edm. which was sooooooo much fun. everything went pretty much good on the station, keeping up with checklists, fixing buzzer problems, doing experiments. then jeremy(the counselor in there) started giving us medical anomalies which were SO insanely fun. the FO for it started getting all pissy about not having a sheet for her experimet and she was throwing stuff and i ws getting really mad at her cuz i thoguht she was just being like grr and i was like JUST DO ANOTHER ONE but she was actually having a manic episode cuz then she was all hyper and like woo. it was funny. so we fixed her with some jelly beans lol. i had a heart attack and died though. i was just laying there unconcious as they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. so since i wasnt breathing during that time i just died. we were forced to sing im a little tea pot to come back to life lol. the ss1 had a couple seizures, then both ss's passed out because the fans werent working so the fo had to fix it but i woke up and helped her after we put our suits on so we could breath, but the ss1 died there..then i had an asthma attack and that was pretty much the 2 hour 50 min mark where we stopped and had pizza..then we went back to our new positions after the crew exchange. that was a lot of fun, being ms1. we did a few checklists on the flight deck, then our pre-eva physicals, then we had to go into the airlock to pre breath for 10 min before we could go outside. once i got up in the canada arm and plugged the umbilacle..i cant spell..into the satilite i got to "pass out" up there. they were taking too long to fix me though, so the counselor told me to just wake up so we could fix the satilite. but we actually never deactivated it before we lowered it into the bay..so we all pretty much died but we did stuff on it anyway then arlisa told us after that we were all dead so we had to sing wheels on the bus...when we got back inside the orbiter there was no power but they fixed that after a while, then there was a fire and the pilot got burned and my ms2 got hit in the head by a low flying fire estinguisher..so i had to fix them..but i actually hurt myself falling in the airlock going into the space hab to get medison and really scraped my elbow LOL. but that was the end of our EDM. it really didnt seem like 6 hours it was like woah its that late already. it was so much fun. we changed our of our flight suits after that and went to the museum again then to dinner. we went on the multi axis trainer after that and then we had an imax movie on the space station which was awesome then we had a museum hunt to study for space bowl and then we actually had space bowl. we broke up weird, a group of 5 a group of 3 and a group of 2 but whatever lol. my group came in second because we all got the last question wrong and one group wagered all of their points, we wagered all but one, and the other group wagered all but fifty so they won. then it was late so we went to bed.. but stayed up packing. the girls did at least. then really randomly we decided to sleep on the floor..so we did. our counser was like what the heck when she came to wake us up and we were in the middle of the floor covered in blankets sourrounded by half packed bags...so we got ready for the day and packed everything up..then carried it down the 4 flights of stairs since the elevator was not coming up..then we went to breakfast. after breakfast we filled out evaluations on the week and went to rocket launch to launch our rockets. we had to wait for a lot of academy kids to do theirs then we got to do ours. it was fun. then we had some time to go to the gift shop..then it was graduation time. since there was only 1 advanced group we graduated with the 4 academy groups. after reallly sad goodbyes, especially to the two girls on our team from the oregon group who i had gotten really close to, all the oregon people left. then all the chicago kids left, and all the people who had their parents come left , or stayed around the site with their parents. there were only 7 of us who were left. 3 of us from advanced, 1 mach3, and 3 academy. we went up to lunch then to the gift shop again.after that we wanted to go on space shot --it was broken allll week and opened on friday, but they were having the moon buggy race so there were INSANE amounts of people there and we waited inline for 30 min before the counselor said we had to get out of line because we had to go get on the bus and didnt have time. so we went back to hab1, got our stuff, and got on the van to the airport. i checked my bags and gotmy boarding passes and waited for everyone else to do the same. 6 of us were going to be ont he same flight to cincinatti, which didnt leave until 345 but they took us to the airport at 2. so we went down stairs to this space camp room that i never knew existed. it had vending machines and a tv and some video games and chairs and tables and there was a big window where you could see out. we saw our plane come to our gate. we got to go upstairs and get real food, the stuff they serve at space camp is notnotnot real food. lol. then we went back upstairs and said bye to grant, he was the only one of us not going on that flight and he had been in advanced with me. and we said bye to scooby who had been my academy counselor 2 years ago and now was the airport lady. then got on the plane. i had to sit next to some older guy, which always happens to me. but in the row across from me were 2 boys who were in academy, and infront of them next to the window was a boy i was in advanced with, and behind them next to the window was the third academy boy, and in the back a ways was the kid that was in mach3. so we took off and it was cool because you could see the saturn v sticking so high above everything else. and i talked to the academy boys for most of the flight. then we landed. they had to stay on cuz they were unaccompanied minors..but the rest of us got to leave.. kyle (he was in advanced with me) and my gates were close to eachother, but we had to take the bus thing to get to concourse b, so we said bye to glen (mach3) cuz he had to stay at concourse c..then we had a little while to kill so we talked for a while then went our separate ways to our gates..i took off at 7 and it was a boring flight. it was only 2 hours long but i was exhausted so i kept falling alseep before we took off. once we were up i was awake though, there were these little boys who were coloring in the row behind me. i had never heard children color so loudly. the weather in manchester when i landed was realllly rainy. and cold. but it was nice to see my family again. the drive home took forever cuz it was hard to see too i guess. i kept falling asleep but was awake for most of it. and now im just home. its really sad. i didnt want to go home. its like i was home. my whole week seemed surreal. it was so scary on thursday, making the realization that i was going back home, back to reality. i didnt want to. i love space camp, i loved my team. i miss it. im so bored and lonely now. i dont know what to do with myself. i totally have to go back, its like an addiction or something. my week was just so incredibly awesome, i have to experience it again. woo that was long. lol.
i think i'll go get my pictures developed tomorrow, i only ended up taking 2 rolls. i hope they all come out. then ill scan them. so yeah.. it was awesome.

[Boomerang]

Wow souds like you had an intresting week. I ha heard they were planning to bring back the 24 hour missions once they get the station mockup complete and have the hab module in place. Too bad you couldn't go scuba diving though i had a similar problem but thankfully i got my ears to clear by going back up a rung on the ladder and clearing it again at a lesser pressure.

[LaRsOnAtRiXkIx]

yeah that will be cool when they finish doing everything theyre doing to the training center floor. they had this little diagram of everything theyre changing over the next couple years there. 24 hour edm's would be so awesome. i really want to go back when they have them.

i got a bunch of my pics up online, not as many as i would have liked but some were pretty crappy quality and stuff. i wish i had taken more picture! grrr! but yeah, if you want to see them theyre at:
http://photos.yahoo.com/kristina_ferrero

[Benji]

The problem about reading other peoples' descriptions of camp is that they make you want to go back soooooo much more. Great pics, btw.

[Boomerang]

Great pictures makes me really want to go back and as soon s possible.

[ApolloXI]

I miss the fun of camp but no the food. From the sounds of it I will not be going on a field trip after all to the Rocket Center. But I will be back in May or June to see Apollo XIII on IMAX. I am going to start looking for a job next week so I can beat the rush> The money from the job will go right to my Space Camp safeings.

[LaRsOnAtRiXkIx]

apollo 13 on imax will be awesome..i love that movie. i wish i could see it on imax.

[Boomerang]

Well i saw Apollo 13 in Imax a few months ago and it was great to see it on the big screen especiually seeing the Saturn V on a big screen like that. But also dont be suprised they cut some scenes out of the movie nothing majorly important but you will still probably notice them. Unfortunately Imax movie Reels only hold about 2 hours of film. Apollo 13 is longer so instead of putting some on a second reel and having to have an intermission to change reels and rewind which takes time especially for a 2 hour movie they cut some scenes from the movie.

[stargazer0105]

Reading other peoples camp stories definitely makes me want to be back there. My dad took me to the USSRC over spring break and it was definitely like being back at home. Unfortunately, my allergies kicked in so I was kinda ready to go back home where everything wasn't blooming yet. But now I am missing it more than ever. I'm supposed to find out this week whether or not I got into the NASA SHARP program. If I didn't I get to go back to camp (YAY!!!!). If I do get in I'm goin to try and go to camp either before I leave or after I get back.

[Boomerang]

Well i really hope you can get into SHARP. NASA has some great education programs. But if not another trip to space camp would be great too.

[stargazer0105]

Yeah, it's pretty much a win-win situation. A letter of acceptance or non-acceptance was supposed to be mailed no later than yesterday and now I'm about to go insane waiting for it.

[Boomerang]

Well i wouldnt worry about not getting the letter yet. the post office is so slow they could slow down the speed of light if they mailed it through the post office. my girlfriend and i live one state away and it takes a week for mail to get to one of us from the other.

[stargazer0105]

I'm not worried about the letter. It's just that it's been a little bit of a pain the last couple of months trying to plan my summer. My parents are trying to buy tickets for vacation and stuff. On top of that, when it comes to something I really want to know about, I don't have a lot of patience. I'm trying to work on that though.

[Boomerang]

Well i'm sure it will come in the next couple of days. Good luck again with getting accepted to SHARP.